On perhaps the worst day of Trump's tumultuous time in office, his former fixer MichaelCohen told a federal judge August 21 he had made illegal campaign contributions - in the form of payments to silence women alleging affairs with Trump - at his boss's request.

Since Trump came to office in early 2017, U.S. economic growth has lept from two percent to a very solid four percent last quarter.

Nearly simultaneously, Michael Cohen, Trump's fixer for decades, pleaded guilty to election fraud and in a shock move pointed to Trump as a co-conspirator. He said recently he knew about payments "later on".

In the interview, Trump argued, incorrectly, that the hush-money payouts weren't "even a campaign violation" because he subsequently reimbursed Cohen for the payments personally instead of with campaign funds.

"My first question when I heard about it was, 'Did they come out of the campaign?' because that could be a little dicey", he said of the payments - believed to have been made to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.

Because the hush payments were meant to influence the outcome of the elections, they violated United States laws governing campaign contributions.

Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday to campaign-finance violations and other charges and implicated the president in his wrongdoing.

After four days of deliberation, jurors found him guilty of eight counts: five of making false income tax returns, two of bank fraud and one of failure to report foreign bank and financial accounts.

"This goes a long way to explaining why Trump is upset about 'flipping, '" University of Alabama law professor Joyce Vance noted, referring to Trump's insistence during a "Fox & Friends" interview early Thursday morning that flipping on higher-ups "almost ought to be illegal".

Trump faced perhaps the worst day of his presidency on Tuesday when his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, implicated him in a crime at nearly the same time his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was convicted on eight counts of tax-and bank-fraud charges, boosting Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation.

The US president lauded the 69-year-old Manafort for leaving his fate to a jury rather than striking a plea deal - a move that has sparked speculation Manafort hopes for a pardon. Behind closed doors, Trump expressed worry and frustration that a man intimately familiar with his political, personal and business dealings for more than a decade had turned on him.